The Opening up of Major Migratory Corridors

In December 2006, some very exciting developments took place in Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe). Botswana and its neighboring countries Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed a memorandum of understanding in which they all agreed to participate in a joint effort to create a Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA).

The area covered within these five countries will be about 287 132 square kilometers and it will join 36 national parks, game reserves, conservancies and game management areas. To put this into perspective, this vast area will be almost the size of Italy, 14 times the size of the Kruger National Park in South Africa and to put it simply, it will be the biggest conservation area in the world.

The driving force behind the concept has been the Peace Parks Foundation and together with the World Wide Fund (WWF) and the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, they have estimated this fantastic prospect to be in place by the year 2010.

The benefits of this concept are huge, it will unite the five countries through conservation and tourism, provide vast employment opportunities and importantly, restore age old migratory routes. Numerous migratory animals will obviously benefit from this but the African elephant will benefit the most. Botswana is at present overpopulated with these beautiful giants and their numbers are estimated to be over 120 000. These majestic animals will now have the opportunity to roam over a vast area thereby reducing their localized impact on vegetation as is the case here in Botswana. Their numbers within this proposed (KAZA) conservation area will be estimated to be over 250 000, the biggest population of elephant in the world.

For Africa, this will be the most significant effort towards conservation for the past century.